The Trouble with Rolf (artist statement, 1995): This work developed from the fourth verse of Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport by Rolf Harris (1966). The 4th verse apparently refers to a dying (white) pastoralist’s last words; his will and testament whereby he is giving away his ‘property’. He mutters: ‘Let me Abo’s go loose, Lew, let me Abo’s go loose…. They’re of no further use, Lew, so let me Abo’s go loose, Altogether now…’

I represented one meaning behind the words by introducing plaster cast Aboriginal stockmen heads, in a musical notation formation spelling-out the fencing-in or -out that has been enforced onto many outback Aboriginal people. Rolf is probably also referring to the ‘freeing’ of Aboriginal stockmen/musterers during the mid 1960’s when the Equal Wages Bill was passed in Australia. Previously, Aboriginal workers were paid a pittance, or with food/tobacco rations. Paradoxically, the legislation resulted in thousands of rural Aboriginal people facing unemployment and being forced off their traditional lands (where they had often managed to continue living due to white ‘landowners’ allowing them to work on these properties). It led to large numbers of Aboriginal people living as displaced persons on the outskirts of townships, many up to the present-day. The song Tie me Kangaroo Down, Sport is a troublesome lyrical arrangement because each verse except for the fourth has Australian fauna as its focus – kangaroos, koalas, platypus, etc. The fourth verse includes Aborigines as part of the ‘wildlife’ of the Australian landscape, and even goes so far as to suggest that they can be ‘let loose’ – released at the whim of a stockman/bushman – inferring that Aboriginal people were under the control of others. Yet this song is of it’s own time, as was Rolf in the mid 1960’s – can Rolf be entirely castigated for proposing a pseudo freedom for the ‘captives’ ? My aim in utilising the song and ‘found’ Aboriginalia – kitsch plaster wall ornament of an Aboriginal stockman, which I then reproduced in multiple, is to reclaim representations of Aboriginal people for ourselves. I believe that the only way to work with imagery, text, inferences that are ‘out there’ already performing their intended roles in society, is to claim these representations, and reuse them subversively outside their original context. * The redirection into new performative roles of their power to damage and undermine can question and redefine our understanding of that past in our country’s present and future. Addendum – 1997: Rolf changed this fourth verse in recent sheet-music reprints of this song, and he no longer sings the fourth verse as he originally intended either. The trouble is, that like Eeny meeny miny mo…music and verse are one of the most pervasive ways to enter into the popular unconscious, and it will be some time before those familiar with the song can replace the original version with the new. I think Rolf was reflecting his times, and the mind-frame of most non-Aboriginal Australian’s in the mid-sixties – where I think he is still ensconced today. I believe that it is crucial that this history hidden amidst the popular is not forgotten.